Reading; The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

I found an old friend while browsing at the Friends of the Library used bookstore.

The copy I found for $3.00 is an old book club version. Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012) wrote it around 1949. Actually he wrote it for many, many years before that and finally pulled all the pieces together into one book.

The book has been printed continuously since 1950. The imagery is amazing. The sand ships still paint the same pictures in my mind they did when I first read this book in high school.

It is so much more than a science fiction book. Have you read it?

And book clubs. The Doubleday Book Club still exists. Wish books weren't quite so expensive. I about choked while wandering the Barnes and Noble bookstore. It's the last physical bookstore that sells new books here. There are only two used bookstores left on Maui. What made me choke? A paperback book for $18.00. I'm sure our Barnes and Noble will close soon. The company is doing horribly and it's just a bad time for bookstores everywhere. My son in Goleta (Santa Barbara, California) has to drive about 30 minutes to get to a bookstore. He's near the University of California. You'd think a "college" town could keep bookstores open, wouldn't you?

Reading; The Ranger by Ace Atkins

I found a new-to-me series.

It's about an Army Ranger, Quinn Colson, that returns to his hometown in Mississippi.

I'm on my third book in the series and I'll go through all the copies in the ebook section of my library.

Ace Atkins is the same author that took over writing the Spenser novels when Robert Parker died. This series reminds me of the early Spenser books before Parker tired of writing them.

I'm going to try to keep posting the books I read. It's hard to remember by the titles alone. Atkins's books all start with "The" and that's just not helpful.